BOOM widget 113724 Uwe Boll, the oft-reviled director behind such critically panned game-to-film adaptations as House of the Dead and Bloodrayne, has once again spoken out on the issues that afflict Hollywood.

Entitled "The Film market -- or THERE IS NO MONEY IN MOVIES," Boll's essay appears to blame the international film market for the poor performance of Bloodrayne, attacks reality television, claims that studio executives live in air balloons, and more.

"If I would run a studio I would do the same movies for half of the
production costs in throwing the cokeheads out and cutting the bullshit of breakfast, lunch, and dinner meetings with idiots who never made a movie in their life," Boll claimed. "I can shoot a movie like Fantastic Four 2 in half of the time for half of the money shot by shot."

Since 2004 the price for movies in the international film market went 85% down. With other words: a movie like my movie Bloodrayne got 2004 in Japan for example $1 million. MG and now $150,000. Mark Gill just wrote: "This time the sky is really falling!" Movies like CHE from Soderbergh or winning films from the Sundance Film festival stay unsold or recoup under 20% of their production costs. Not 9 from 10 movies loosing money: 49 from 50 movies loosing money FOR THE PEOPLE THEY PAID THE MOVIE.

20 years ago maybe three movies came out every week. Now 6 to 10.

I started my $60,000 movie German Fried Movie with five prints 1991 in German theaters with $20,000 in p&a [advertising costs] and sold 20,000 tickets over a period of four months. Just now the new Julia Roberts movie sold under 70,000 tickets with $1 million in p&a. And this is not one special example -- this happens to 9 out of 10 medium movies. And here again: movie number 10 is also not making money -- the disaster is only smaller.

In earlier days you had 5 to 10 event movies per year. Now you have 40. And they destroy the medium movies. Not because they are good! Because they are so expensive and spending so much money in p&a to win their weekends and to win market share.

Even if the majors now omitting their medium product and go only for event movies -- they also loose money. If they spend $150 million in making a big movie and $70 million in p&a for USA/Canada only -- they would need $440 million BOX OFFICE in USA/Canada to recoup this movie. This amount of BO made 2007 no movie at all and they released 179 movies. The reality is that in 2007 only 9 movies out of 179 made this amount WORLDWIDE in the BO. And for worldwide p&a you must spend always per movie another $30 to 50 million. In fact: from 179 Major Movies per year almost 80% are not even making their p&a costs in the theaters back and 70% will loose money even after DVD and TV and foreign sales. And the other 30% are not compensating this 70%.

Also DVD releases cost money and not all revenues going against the production or p&a costs -- there are also distribution fees of 10 to 20% first due.

The so called WORD OF MOUTH movies are major set ups like Borat or Juno with a p&a spend of minimum $30 million per movie. The Oscar Movies are image transfer investments: There Will Be Blood was a $42 million p&a spend with less then 40% returns of the p&a.

In 1999 piracy maybe destroyed 5% of the revenues -- now 40%. Why? Because tons of territories in Asia, Latin America, Eastern Europe are selling more pirated DVDs as legal DVDs. Illegal downloads taking 20% of theatrical and HV revenues of movies away everywhere. Legal downloads to rent or to own are not compensating anything ? people don't want to pay for downloads. A $1 billion gross in downloads means a loss of $9 billion in DVD sales.

In TV are less and less spaces for films. Every channel is showing casting and reality shows: Superstar, Idol, Cooking, Handyman shows are invading the channels.

It's proven that actors are totally overpaid. Some beach boys getting hyped up and absurd amounts paid for saying five lines per day and letting the stuntguys doing the hard work. If the studios would in general not pay more as max. $3 million for a star per movie -- the stars would work for that money if nobody offers more. It's also absurd to pay medium names more as $250,000 per movie.

Why not Pirates putting for 10 years in jail?

Why SHOWTIME or HBO paying for independent movies $20,000 and for medium movies produced by the majors millions. TV channels must show more movies and pay also fair prices for independent product.

Theaters must show also more trailers of smaller movies.

The majors must agree to reduce the p&a -- because the p&a makes movies unprofitable. If nobody spends more as $20 million p&a -- the BOX OFFICE in the end will be the same -- because people want to see movies.

TV and Radio channels must report more also about small movies.

I will stop here before I start writing about totally overpaid agents, managers, agents, and studio executives in L.A. living in airballoons as long they can rip money out of the world outside of L.A. or the major companies. If I would run a studio I would do the same movies for half of the production costs in throwing the cokeheads out and cutting the bullshit of breakfast, lunch, and dinner meetings with idiots who never made a movie in their life. I can shoot a movie like Fantastic Four 2 in half of the time for half of the money shot by shot.